Cisco Enterprise Agreements help organizations achieve outcomes

Businesses are deploying technology to achieve outcomes. While this may sound like a cliché, more and more organizations are looking inward and modernizing their technology acquisition processes to better facilitate this.

As part of this evolution, technology procurement is moving away from procurement by commodity or product line, and toward closer alignment with the business. This in turn allows stakeholders at all levels of the organization to deliver results that management measures, and better contribute to the organization’s mission.

A primary way that many organizations acquire software is via an ‘a-la-carte’ method, meaning, they procure their licensing when the need arises. This method has quite a few drawbacks, a large one being the need to go through your organization’s procurement process every time you need more licensing. The good news: Cisco Enterprise Agreements (EAs) are designed to support modern IT and business initiatives, while offering a faster time to implementation and reducing total cost of ownership.

EA enrollments aligned to outcomes

A primary reason why Cisco EAs align to an organization’s outcomes and align the procurement process with IT and business objectives is through the use of enrollments. Strategic initiatives designed to achieve digital transformation – improved customer and employee experience, faster time to market, better collection of and access to data and information – all require the integration of disparate technologies and involve multiple departments and stakeholders. This requires greater flexibility in managing software licensing than traditional approaches acquisition can deliver. EAs facilitate the kind of agility today’s businesses need to keep pace – with greater control over costs and related resources.

Many organizations are supporting hybrid workforces with devices, applications, security, and infrastructure that remote workers need. Cisco has created cross-architecture suite bundles that combine collaboration solutions like Webex meetings and messaging, with security solutions designed for remote workers like Duo Access and Umbrella web security. The result is the Secure Remote Work enrollment – an EA designed to facilitate a hybrid workforce.

Specific EA attributes for this use case include:

• Best-of-breed collaboration and security solutions at a competitive price point
• Predictable, per user pricing
• Options to select cloud-based or on-premises calling

Additional EA benefits include flexible 3- to 5-year commitment, as well as annual true forward, which means no retroactive billing.

Simplicity for a complex world

The job of managing enterprise software agreements, regardless of the software vendor, has continually grown more complex. This struggle with complexity has led to additional challenges that often delay or derail deployment of software. These include difficulty in managing difficult software licensing terms, unpredictably rising costs, and one of the most frustrating – wasted money and lack of return due to shelfware.

Cisco EAs, like the Secure Remote Work bundle mentioned above, are administered on a single contract with a single end date. All software added during the agreement will always terminate on that same end date.

SHI Cisco EA management services are designed with our customers in mind, and our teams will work with you to ensure you take advantage of all the benefits described. Working with SHI means that your Cisco EA is:

• Easy to buy – cross-architecture bundling, predictable billing and locked-in pricing
• Easy to consume – true forward benefits, no penalties for growth
• Easy to manage – single management dashboard and a dedicated customer success team

Are you taking advantage of Cisco EA benefits?

SHI can easily assess your Cisco estate to make sure you are optimizing your procurement, aligning with growth goals, and minimizing business risk. Our Install Base Analysis will provide answers showing:

• Are you realizing all available cost saving opportunities?
• Can you optimize your buying strategy for additional cost savings?
• Have you identified the right EA enrollments?

If you aren’t currently taking advantage of EAs within your environment, now is the right time to start considering your options – and reaping the rewards.

Contact SHI to learn how our Install Base Analysis can help your organization.